


The echo of the sea

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Alea iacta est [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, F/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:30:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joanna Lannister is a proud woman, and pride is such a burden when there is shame to be felt.</p><p>Or, Joanna lives, and some things are different while others remain the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The echo of the sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tywinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/gifts).



> For the lovely, lovely Lauren - happy birthday, my darling!

"Does it hurt still?"

Tywin's fingertips kiss the ugly, still-healing incision on her belly through her nightgown, showing her all the tenderness she knows he reserves just for her. He would find her beautiful even if the maester had sliced her face from brow to chin to release the monster, and so his caresses mean nothing, really.

"It is not so bad," Joanna says quietly, tugging her bedrobe around herself to hide her sore breasts and aching belly. This is the first lie she has ever told Tywin, or at least, it is the first lie she has ever told him without the intention of revealing the truth later. 

Here, in their bedchamber, she has never before hidden a truth from him. Here, in their bedchamber, she thinks she has become a different person than the woman Tywin wed, for it was here, in their bedchamber, that she brought a monster into the world.

 

* * *

 

 

The smallfolk whisper that the monster's shape and nature are a punishment from the gods, visited upon Tywin and herself for their hubris - on Tywin for daring to wield greater power than the King, on herself for daring to be finer than the Queen. 

Joanna has never been sure that she believes in the gods. They have always seemed so far away and impossible, like the ice dragons of the Shivering Sea, or the plague butterflies of Naath. That such an ephemeral idea of power might have the strength to harm her, to harm  _Tywin,_ seems ludicrous, and she does her best to dismiss the  _gods_ out of hand.

But when she looks at the scarring on her belly, when she looks into the horrible blackness of the monster's wrong eye, which shines dark like the Stranger's cowl, she cannot help but believe. 

Aerys and Rhaella are weak, are frail and useless and inelegant in a way that Tywin and Joanna are  _not,_ in a way that Loreza and Trystane pity but Joanna and Tywin  _scorn,_ and it seems plainly absurd that they be punished for being the better in nature than the fools who sit the throne.

But she looks at that black eye, and she cannot help but doubt.

 

* * *

 

 

"My sweet girl," Loreza sighs, bundling Joanna into a silken embrace that smells sweet, of peonies and honeysuckle. She always loved sweet scents, even when they were at court together and Rhaella's tastes leaned more toward the musky scents that were imported from Essos. "I am so glad that the gods favoured you with survival. Such a child so often steals away their mother, but you were too strong for him."

"Not strong enough to triumph against the rage of those same gods you say favour me," Joanna says drily, forcing a small smile when Loreza holds her at arm's length and looks her over from top to toe. She has worn gold, which was always Loreza's favourite colour on her, and feels that it matches well with the bright silver shining through Loreza's glossy black hair, the rich copper-and-gold jewellery at Loreza's throat and wrists and ears. "What sort of woman wishes to live to mother a child such as  _that?"_

"A sensible one," Loreza says firmly, looping her arm through Joanna's and turning her so she might greet Tywin. "Do you not agree, my lord? I believe that the sweet lady ought to be thankful for her life, and in that thankfulness, she might find some good in the child."

Tywin's mouth twists, just about escaping a scowl, and he greets the Princess of Dorne elegantly and politely enough. Joanna smiles, truly smiles, for the first time since she was sliced open, and links her free arm through Tywin's, bringing together through herself the two people she knows will always love her best.

The twins, after all, will likely hate her once they hear of her plans.

 

* * *

 

 

Her bleeding becomes irregular, somewhere in the months after she gives birth, and within a year she becomes convinced that she will never bear Tywin another child.

Jaime, away at Crakehall, is thriving - this she is told in every letter, written in his crooked, uncertain hand, or in Lord Sumner's bold, brash writing. Cersei, in the Water Gardens, is not so pleased, writing of her displeasure at sweet, soft Elia's company, and at sharp, too-bright Oberyn's teasing, but Loreza writes that Cersei's hair has bleached as white as a Targaryen's under the Dornish sun, and her skin has darkened to a perfect gold, and that she is celebrated among all the children for her fierceness and pride.

Jaime will wed some Western girl, Joanna knows not who yet, or perhaps the Tully girl Tywin has mentioned, and he will reign as Lord of the Rock until his hair is grey and he has many tall, fine grandsons, of this she is sure, just as she is sure that Cersei will be a Princess of Dorne, safe and strong and unbending as any member of House Martell Joanna has ever known. 

They will never go further than they did that evening she caught them  _playing_ in Cersei's bedchamber, and their fine futures and their separation will sooth some of the ache in Joanna's soul, when she compares her perfect twins to the monster.

 

* * *

 

 

"My lady?"

The imp - she finds it hard to think of him as a monster, now that he speaks so much, and so often laughs with Tywin's fool of a youngest brother - is just over three years old now, as ugly as ever, but intelligent in a way that stunned them all. He is already making clumsy letters, sounding out simple books, and has ideas and thoughts such as Jaime, bright, bold Jaime, did not begin to have until he was five, mayhaps even six.

"What is it, child?" she says, beckoning her wretched son from his place in the half-shadows by her door. "Did one of the maids tease you again?"

He is as sensitive to being maligned as Tywin, she has noticed, and loathes to see Tywin mirrored in such a horrible little thing. Still, he is a Lannister, the Lord of Casterly Rock's son, and any servant who dares mock him ought to be flogged.

"No, my lady," he says, trembling where Jaime would smile, offering her a half-bow would Cersei would bound into the room and lift herself into the chair opposite. "I only wondered- that is, I had hoped that I might begin lessons."

"You are young for lessons," she says sharply. "Too young, most would say."

"It is just that I cannot play with the other boys," he says, folding his little hands together before him and opening his uneven eyes as wide as he can, imploringly. It would be charming, on any other child, but not on him. Never on him.

"Speak with your father," she says, "and the maester. You are not my concern, child."

There are tears, in those mismatched eyes, but Joanna does not care. Of late, she has only cared for Tywin, and for the success of the twins, and so the boy's little upsets are far, far from her concern.

 

* * *

 

 

She has ugly scars all up her forearms to match the scar on her belly by the Imp's fourth nameday, and Tywin presses her to come to court with him.

He thinks that it will be a distraction from the echo of the sea in her ears, calling her away from the Rock, where lives her greatest shame. 

He stops only when she reminds him that Aerys will be there, and with Aerys, the threat to her safety that he presents.

 

* * *

 

 

Dusk over the Sunset Sea is almost as beautiful as Tywin in triumph, she thinks.

"I am sorry, my love," she whispers to the sky, "that you will have no remains to mourn over."

It is a step, from the highest balcony of the Rock into nothing, and after the water as green as her eyes, as Tywin's, there is a darkness, like Tyrion's odd eye.

Somehow, that seems fitting to her, in the brief moment before the end.

 

* * *

 

 

(Tyrion finds her, one day, washed up on the beach below the Rock and half a ruin, recognisable only by the jewels on her body. Tywin never forgives him, for confirming her death.)


End file.
